Yahoo Finance Stocks - Wall Street Soars as Traders Cheer Strong Jobs Report
Investing.com – U.S. stocks shed trade and political worries Friday to surge to their highest levels since the end of November.
The catalyst was a better-than-expected jobs report from the Labor Department that showed a 266,000 increase in payroll employment, while the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 3.5%.
The S&P 500 was up 0.9% on the day. The Dow Jones industrials added 1.2%, and its 337-point gain let the index finish above 28,000 for the first time since Nov. 29. The Nasdaq Composite and Nasdaq 100 indices added 1% and 1.1%, respectively. A star was the small-cap US SmallCap 2000 index, which was up 1.2% and hit a 52-week high during the day.
The major indexes ended the week basically flat from a week earlier. Friday's rally recovered the sizable losses suffered on Nov. 29, Monday and Tuesday.
For the year, the S&P 500 is up about 26%. The Dow has added 20%, and the Nasdaq has risen about 30%.
Ten of the 11 S&P 500 sectors were higher, led by energy shares, up 2.15%. The sector saw big gains for exploration and production companies such as Apache (NYSE:APA) and Devon Energy (NYSE:DVN), and services companies such as Halliburton (NYSE:HAL).
The one sector falling back was utilities, vulnerable to higher interest rates. The 10-Year Treasury yield rose to 1.842% from Thursday's 1.795%.
Gold and housing stocks also fell back.
A host of stocks hit new highs, including Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Nike (NYSE:NKE) and Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL).
Ulta Beauty (NASDAQ:ULTA) was up 13.2% after better-than-expected quarterly results and easily led the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100. Boeing (NYSE:BA), up 1.87%, nonetheless contributed 44 points to the Dow's gain.
Uber Technologies (NYSE:UBER) fell 2.7% after the ride-sharing company disclosed data on sexual assaults and rapes by its drivers.
Oil prices were higher after OPEC agreed to more production cuts. West Texas Intermediate crude settled up 72 cents to $59.20. Gold fell $18 to $1,465.10 an ounce in New York.
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